The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will celebrate its 30th anniversary in October 2027 with a special program. This milestone will honor the museum's three decades of history and success, as well as the evolution of its vibrant cultural scene. As its Director General, Miren Arzalluz, recently stated, she hopes it will be "a collective celebration".
Following the Guggenheim Bilbao Board meeting, chaired by the lehendakari Imanol Pradales, the museum announced that it is working on an exhibition showcasing its own collection. This presentation is designed to celebrate the institution's journey and its ongoing commitment to contemporary art and society, and is scheduled for Autumn 2027.
The 2027 exhibition program will prominently feature several fundamental female artists crucial to understanding the evolution of contemporary art in recent decades.
The 2026 exhibition program will open with the first monographic exhibition in Spain dedicated to the French artist and filmmaker Philippe Parreno, one of the most influential European artists of the 1990s generation. The show, opening in mid-March, will explore Parreno's connection to his Mediterranean roots and his relationship with landscape and ecosystems amidst the current environmental crisis.
From late April, the museum will host a major retrospective of Cuban artist Carmen Herrera, a pioneer of abstraction and a significant figure of the latter half of the 20th century. The exhibition will feature over 200 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints created between 1937 and 2021.
Like many other female artists, Herrera's work was overlooked for years, only gaining recognition in her 90s. "Being ignored is a form of freedom. I felt liberated from having to constantly please others," she once remarked in an interview.
In early October, another exhibition focusing on women will arrive: Kaih: Japanese Women Artists after 1945. It will analyze the essential role of these creators in Japan and in communities formed across Asia, Europe, the USA, and Brazil during the post-war global era. Breaking gender barriers, they revolutionized the international contemporary scene through installations, performances, painting, and the Superflat movement.
This exhibition aligns with the museum's ongoing dedication to monographic shows celebrating female creators whose innovations have left a lasting impact on the art world.
The in situ exhibition cycle, featuring works created specifically for the Guggenheim, will launch in May with Do Ho Suh, a London-based Korean artist renowned for his ethereal, large-scale installations that reconstruct architectural spaces from his lived experience using translucent fabrics.
In December, the cycle will feature the Bilbao-born artist Itziar Barrio, a multidisciplinary creator whose work unfolds through long-term research-driven projects, often developed with various collaborators. Her work rewrites dominant narratives to explore new futures.
The museum also reported that during the first months of the year, it welcomed 516,734 visitors, 12% above budget and 3% less than the cumulative figure at the same date in 2025.
Geographically, 67% of the audience came from abroad, with France being the largest group (14%), followed by countries like the United Kingdom and Germany.
These figures reinforce the museum's international profile and its enduring appeal nearly three decades after its inauguration.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao received 1,305,003 visitors in 2025, 3,660 more than in 2024. May, June, and July were the best months in its history, making summer the second best on record after 2023.
The museum's busiest year was 2023 with 1,324,000 visitors, followed by 2017 (1,322,611) and 1998 (1,307,200). Consequently, 2025 would rank as the fourth busiest year since the museum opened in October 1997.
